Dear Sleep, Please Come Back to Me.

This is a picture of Charlie when he was little and pudgy . . . because it’s a lot cuter than a picture of me without sleep.

When we first got to Austin in 2009, I was about 3 months pregnant. A couple of days after we arrived, I started developing pregnancy insomnia. I’d wake up, lay there, roll over, lay there, roll over again, start crying, and then finally get out of bed and take a shower. Usually the shower would relax me enough to get back to sleep, but not always. Sometimes it’s best to just get up.

Well, it took a couple more months this time around, but the insomnia is back with a vengeance, and I’m trying not to be so emotional about it. Last night, I set my alarm for 7 so I could get up early and do some blogging before Charlie wakes up. It’s difficult to secure a time just to sit down and work at my parents’ house . . . mainly because I don’t want to lock myself in a room for an hour while my parents watch Charlie; I’d rather reserve that time for a nap.

So, of course, since I had a plan, I woke up at 4 and could not go back to sleep. My main sleep enemy right now is nasal congestion. You’re not supposed to take allergy medicine when you’re pregnant if you can help it, and pregnant women also make more snot because of their extra hormones. It’s not awesome. Anyway, after laying there and rolling over a few hundred times, I decided to just get up. I actually managed not to cry this time.

Really, the thing I was most upset about? The fact that I would probably get tired around 6:30 and go back to bed. (That, and the fact that the Food Network switches to paid programming after midnight.) This would mean that I wouldn’t get to wake up early and blog. After about 45 minutes of watching TV I didn’t really want to watch, I realized I was being quite stupid.

Hey, Self. How about maybe you blog now?

Oh. Oh, yeah . . . I guess I could do that.

I have to keep reminding myself that structure is simply not going to fall into my lap right now. I’m going to have to be proactive and make it happen.

All of this thinking and being awake is making me hungry. I’m actually pretty surprised that I’ve been up for 2 hours and haven’t eaten anything. Good thing there’s leftover beef stew in the fridge, right?